Reviews

Well, this is an interesting little ‘James Bond’ style opening they have. Strangely, we follow a man who doesn’t remember anything about his background, not even his own name. I feel as though they kind have coped out with using amnesia as their background. The only little look we get into his past is his ‘master’ who I see as a stupid slime ball. That’s only the first act though, and the others get even crazier. Unfortunately, the first episode lost me. They started talking about science and animal instants to a point I had no clue what they were talking about. I was still confused as I kept watching and got pretty much no answer, and to top it all off, there are three arcs that seem to mess me up a bit. There were many times they kept hinting at a love between some of the characters and yet it was pretty much all a tease.

As I kept watching, it did get slightly better on the character scale but the story line fell apart. Yuko turned into a slut and though the two main characters turned into more interesting characters but it was little too late. Not only that, but the basterd ‘master’ was even creepier more then before. Spy also turned rather creepy, bent on killing the master as though he was brainwashed again. You see his true self, which isn’t different then when he was a phantom. And it doesn’t help that the main character should have been dead at episode 10, but somehow, he ends up surviving. It poses the question, how the hell did he end up surviving being drowned and shot three times in the chest. MAK put it best when I was speaking with him outside the podcast as putting it ‘Logic: “Um… what happened?” Phantom: “Well, Fuck you! HAHAHA!!”’ There is no logic in the show at all and this makes it worse.

And now we go into the second arc, which makes no fucken sense. And its only 6 fucken months when Spy ‘died’ and when he pretty much does what he wants by going back to being a stool pigeon for Inferno. Logic also doesn’t have a hand in how he looks so much older then he was before. And they brought a strange lolita girl into the mix and he takes her down like what happen to him. Then near the end of that arc, they made a really strange story up about mistrust in Inferno and had a bunch of the characters killed off. These little storylines behind the characters were a little heart wrenching… if it didn’t feel like they were pulled out of someones ass. There was no hints what so ever that there was something odd going on or about Claudia’s brother or nothing, noda zip-ditalie do da day bit of info that any of this was ever going to come up.

Now, the third arc should never of existed. Again in the words of MAK ‘Consistency: Hey guys, what the hell is going on?Phantom: Well, you see here is that...*slaps consistency* Fuck you, that what's going on.’ I mean, Spy and Ein go to school… and are acting as brother and sister. Not only that, but Cal who was the youngest character is now pretty much an adult. What I see is somehow, Cal grew up rather fast in two years and Ein and Spy have actually somehow de-aged. I also love how when Spy sees Cal, the first thing he thinks is why she’s here, then she’s alive… but we don’t get the question on everyone’s mind of how she grew up as fast as she did.

The Animation is actually rather good looking. Backgrounds have a lot of interesting detail to them and yet it doesn’t push the characters into feeling out of place or blend them to into the background. When they bring in the CG, it wasn’t all that off putting though they should of probably stuck to normal animation. The beginning of episode 12 starts out with some very realistic images of a city which actually looked a little ok. We could really do without the sexual images of little girls being rubbed down by older sick men. It annoys the hell of me that all of these shows have that. One other thing that really bugs me is the idea of the recoil on the guns in this show. There is no real physics in it like the fact that in real life, you cannot shoot an AK47 with one hand because of how bad the recoil is. I have seen this done many times in real shows. It is just not possible.

The music and opening is actually rather sad, using surreal images and somewhat sexual looking backgrounds to the point it feels very James Bond like. Sadly, the ending song seems more like something from Rozen Maiden in both style and imagery. I guess it does work slightly but just makes me feel a bit sad because the opening and ending feels like it should have been switched.

The voices are… let’s just say don’t fit well. One or two actually sound alright to the characters but the main characters feel a bit off. Ein feels like Yuki from Haruhi Suzumiya in that she never seems to actually speak without a dull monotone that wants to lull me to sleep. As for Zwei, he feels a bit disinterested in anything around him and rather boring as well. I did like Raymond McGuire, who is voiced by J.Michael Tatum, who is one of the main executives of Inferno. Claudia is also done rather interesting with a voice that is pretty much Yuko from xxxHolic. She seems as a voice of reason and actually has rather good intentions to the characters. As such, I guess it was reasonable to give her Yuko’s voice.